


The Disappearance of Haru Yoshioka

by Catsafari



Category: Neko no Ongaeshi | The Cat Returns
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27288259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catsafari/pseuds/Catsafari
Summary: “It’s been a while since Haru visited.” “Who’s Haru?” // Baron remembers a case that no one else seems to recall, that has no records, that – as far as the world is concerned – never happened. So why does he?
Relationships: Baron Humbert von Gikkingen/Yoshioka Haru
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





	1. The Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This was originally a request by fanlovedlt for a prompt inspired by Doctor Who's episode: Turn Left. Unbeknown to them, I had already half an idea formed from the episode, so it was all the permission I needed to go merrily careening off into the sunset with this plot concept. A month later, I had 13 parts spread across 13K words, so I've decided to post it as a two-parter for Hallowe'en, for ease of reading.
> 
> While this is being posted for Hallowe'en, it's more suspense than horror, so no ghost or ghoulies inhabit this story :)

Baron doesn't know exactly when she disappeared.

Maybe it was after she missed their monthly catch-up dinner - but, then again, the Bureau had been running late and it wouldn't have been the first time she had to admit defeat to her regular life.

Or perhaps it was when she didn't drop by with her weekly cake offerings for Muta - which was less about the cake nowadays and more about the excuse of a visit - but maybe they had missed her. The Bureau's doors were always open to her, but its inhabitants kept irregular home hours.

Or possibly it was around the same time they had that freak hurricane and she didn't detour by the next day to check in on them.

He makes excuses, reasons for not knowing, for not sensing that something vital - that some _one_ \- was missing from his life the moment she vanished, but in the end the only truth he has left is that by the time he realises, he's too late.

x

The shock comes one early March day. The daffodils are just beginning to flower in their plant boxes and the realisation that spring is on the way brings about thoughts of Haru and birthdays.

"The problem with spring birthdays," he jovially announces to the rest of the Bureau, "is that they follow too soon after Christmas. The perfect gift takes time to find, and few measly months is hardly enough."

Toto pauses grooming his feathers with the expression of one suddenly afraid they have forgotten an important date. "Spring birthdays?" he echoes. "Whose are we celebrating?"

"Whoever it is, I ain't shopping for them," Muta grumbles from the sofa. "I remember the last time yer dragged me into a spirit market. Thanks, but no thanks."

"Really, Muta; just because she didn't bring a cake last week is no reason to ignore her birthday," Baron scolds lightly.

"Whose birthday, Baron?"

It is then that the first sliver of something akin to dread freezes through Baron's veins. He turns to Toto, appraising his oldest friend's face - looking for the telltale smirk, the crinkling of the eyes that betray a joke - and finds only sincerity. "Why, Haru's, of course."

"Who's Haru?"

"It's probably just a client or someone," Muta calls, only half-listening. "I can never keep track of all the waifs and strays yer insist on helping."

"You're part of the Bureau too, hairball," Toto reminds him. "You're meant to help as well."

"Yeah, but I draw the line at buying presents for them all. The Christmas card list is already too long as it is."

"Haru," Baron repeats. "Haru Yoshioka." His gloved hands curl in on his desk and the dread pools into his stomach. "The human who has been visiting the Bureau for the past decade. If this is a joke, then it's in exceptionally poor taste."

Muta cackles. "Haru who? Aren't you a little too old for imaginary friends, Baron?"

"Haru Yoshioka," Baron says again, and he rounds on Muta. "She brings you cake every week and learnt to bake angel food cake, just for you. She helps you with your newspaper puzzles, and calls you Buta when you steal the last cake slice. She snuck you into the cinema last month to see an action film you couldn't wait for the DVD of, and once rigged up a projector in the Sanctuary for a movie night."

"Baron, are you feeling..." Toto begins.

Baron turns to the crow, pleading. "Toto, she helped you move your favourite mulberry tree when the new road was due to destroy it. She stole out into the night and it took her until 3am to shift it somewhere safe. When one of your friends broke their wing, she took him in and looked after him until he healed. She plays chess with you regularly, even though you win nine tenths of the time, and she still finds it funny to call the rooks 'ravens' on your side. So don't ask me if I'm feeling okay, Toto, because I am fine, but something else is very, very _wrong_."

A silence lingers in the Bureau.

"Baron," Toto says, "there's never been a Haru in the Bureau."

An uncharacteristic growl curdles in Baron's throat and he snatches up his cane. "She buys me a new cane every year - ever since my old one buckled during her case with us - how do you explain _this_ without her?"

Toto looks with pitying eyes on his friend. "Baron, that's the same cane you've had for decades."

And now Baron feels the difference in the wood - in the nicks and scars the old stick bears from years of use - and the cane he holds is foreign to him.

"You always said you were going to replace it," Toto says gently, "but you never got round to it."

x

He tears through his case records, barely noting the mess he leaves in his wake, but there is no sign, not a single word or whisper of that Cat Kingdom case from all those years ago.

All the while, that cane lies mocking to one side.

Eventually, he sits in the remains of his destruction, surrounded by paperwork and files that tell the same story, a story everyone but he seems to remember, and for the first time in his long life he feels truly lost.

The clatter of talons pick their way across the papered floor, and a wing curls around him. "I'll get my friends to keep an eye out for this... Haru Yoshioka," Toto offers gently. "You said she lived near one of the Sanctuary's openings?"

"One of the Japanese archways," Baron says. He picks his head up, trying to sort through the mental haze that clouds his thoughts. "Muta, you and I will visit the Cat Kingdom; even if Lune and Yuki don't recall Haru, they may still be willing to help find her."

Muta snorts. "The Cat Kingdom? Yeah, I'm gonna give that one a miss, but thanks for thinking of me."

"What's the matter, Muta? I thought you enjoyed their catnip jelly."

"Not enough to get captured over it, but you can bring back a doggie bag if you like. Good luck finding any though."

"What do you mean? I was under the impression King Lune pardoned your crimes years ago."

There is a pause.

"Baron," Toto informs him softly, "there is no King Lune. There was a _Prince_ Lune, but he died years ago."

"How?" Baron asks hoarsely, although he fears he already knows the answer.

"He was hit by a speeding truck in the Human World. The death of the crown prince changed the Cat King; he spiralled and when he eventually died from grief without an heir, the nobility fought for the throne. The Cat Kingdom has been in chaos ever since."

x

This is wrong.

All of this is wrong.

x

The house where she grew up is changed; the name on the gateway is no longer Yoshioka, but that of another family, and the garden is clear of the cattails that had plagued the house since the Cat Kingdom's interference.

He runs his fingers over the gate's carved inscription and feels where the stonemason has worn the plate down to make room for the new name.

This was his last hope, the last known home of Haru's, and it - like her flat and her previous apartment - has yielded only emptiness.

"Maybe it's because there's no Haru," Toto murmurs later. His voice is low, laden with the guilt of suggesting such a thing when Baron has thrown himself body and soul into this search. "Maybe the reason you can't find her is because she doesn't exist."

"She does," Baron growls. "I remember her, even if you don't."

Toto looks on his oldest friend and finds no answer that won't break the Creation's heart further.

x

"Lune was in the Human World."

Toto looks up at Baron's sudden announcement. The cat Creation has gleamed little sleep in the passing weeks - not that Creations need much, but the consequences are beginning to catch up with him. Baron's movements have slowed, the light in his eyes dimmed, but he has brushed off all Toto's remarks, if not his worry.

"What was that?"

"Lune was in the Human World at exactly the same time in my timeline," Baron reiterates. He has taken to referring to 'his' timeline and 'this' timeline, desperately clinging onto the truths that only he remembers. "He must have been in order to get hit by the same truck." He scrabbles through his notes. His once orderly system has been shredded to pieces, dominated by the absent Haru, but eventually he finds what he is looking for. "The only reason Lune was out in the Human World at that exact place and time was because he was picking up fish crackers for Yuki."

"The Cat Queen from yer world?" Muta asks, trying to keep track of this alternative timeline that Baron is so insistent on. "You mean that Yuki?"

"Yes. Haru saved Yuki's life when they were both young - I had forgotten because it was in the original case file notes _which I don't have_ , but Yuki would have died without Haru's help."

"So if Lune was fetching something for this Yuki..." Muta says.

"Then Haru exists. We just need to find her."

x

"Existed," Toto later amends. "It means Haru exist _ed_."

Baron doesn't look up from the portal preparations. His movements are still slowed - he has yet to sleep - but now there is a purpose to his actions. He is focused, directed like an arrow with no way to go but forward. Wherever forward may lead.

"Baron," Toto prompts, "I said-"

"I know what it means," Baron growls. "Do you think I haven't considered it?"

"I think that you're running straight into the Cat Kingdom on the off-chance of finding this alleged 'Yuki' in hopes she will know where this 'Haru' is," Toto says. He hops down to the cobbled ground, moving between Baron and the archway. "Baron, please listen to me. I'm only saying this because I care about you and I cannot watch you throw yourself into unreasonable danger."

"You wouldn't call it unreasonable if you remembered Haru."

Toto's gaze narrows. "No," he replies. "I probably wouldn't. But I don't. So you'll have to excuse me if I care more about my oldest friend than this mythical human I have no recollection of."

"What do you think, Toto?" Baron snaps. "Do you think I made her up? Do you think I imagined her?"

"I think you believe she's real," Toto says, "but we've all seen the effects of memory magic. Who's to say this isn't a trick? Or a side effect from some rogue magic we've encountered on a case? All I'm asking is that you consider all possibilities before running headfirst into a war-torn world."

Baron finishes the portal preparations, and a blue curtain fills the archway. "You'll be too conspicuous in the Cat Kingdom, so just Muta and I will go. You'll need to watch this side of the portal and make sure nothing untoward finds its way into the Sanctuary."

Toto's expression tightens, but he nods. "Come back safe, Baron."

x

The eternal noon sunshine still shines over the Cat Kingdom, but it is a very different world from the quiet cattail meadows Baron remembers. Without an heir in line, the throne has been thrown up for the first cat to claim it, and there are many felines who are willing to fight for that prize.

Baron moves through the abandoned palace, pausing only in the ballroom where the stained glass dome has been shattered and now lies in painted teardrops across the floor. Muta gives him a strange look as he lingers by a table filled with a forgotten feast, gloved hands trailing along the frayed cloth.

But there is no Yuki to be found here, and so they widen their search.

x

He finds her.

Yuki.

Eventually.

Their search is slow, hampered by the civil war that scars the kingdom, and it is a month - maybe? time is so fickle in the sun-soaked world - before their questions finally bring them to a small white cat.

She doesn't have the red ribbon that Baron remembers - was it red? maybe it was pink - and her fur is dull from the life she has lead. At first she has nothing to say to the strange ginger tabby with his gloved hands and huge companion, but when Haru's name crosses Baron's lips, she hesitates.

"I haven't heard that name in a long time," she says. "Not since I was a kitten."

"Is she still alive?" Baron presses.

"Maybe," Yuki answers. "I used to keep an eye on her, but I lost track of her when..." and she gestures loosely to the world about her. "I think she moved away from her childhood home about six years back. Why? Is something wrong?"

"I don't know," he says, "but I intend to find out."

x

The moon has waxed and waned a full cycle by the time Baron and Muta reappear through the portal. Baron looks like he has continued to forgo sleep during their excursion, but there is an electric energy to his movements. The first true smile in months breaks across his face, and Toto sees that the corners of his mouth are becoming wooden from his sleepless days.

"She's alive," he whispers, and his legs give way.

x

Toto thinks much in the ensuing week.

Finally Baron has reached a point where even he cannot argue against his fatigue and, even if he did, he does not have the strength to fight against Toto's ordered bed rest. But Toto knows that when Baron awakens, he will be just as driven - if not more so - in his quest.

Toto has known Baron for the majority of the cat Creation's life, and yet this new fervour unnerves him. He has seen Baron in many moods, has seen him drive himself to distraction, but never like this. Never to the point of destruction.

And he will.

Toto sees that now. He had feared as much during his month guarding the portal, knowing that Baron would not return until he found an answer one way or another, but a small, practical part of him wishes the answer had been different.

He does not wish ill on this Haru, whoever she may be. But he does not know her. She may be real, she may not, but his responsibilities are to those he does know. To those who are real, who are here and now, and who he is watching tear themselves apart right before him.

He sleeps an uneasy slumber, knowing the days ahead will be fraught.

x

Hope burns brightly in Baron when he awakes, but Toto is all too aware that fire and wood have never matched in wood's favour.

"She's alive - or she was six years ago," Baron rambles at his desk, pulling notes and files together with a frenzied speed, as if all too afraid Haru will slip from him a second time. "Which is imperative, because that's _after_ Lune died. Whatever changed, it occurred while Haruhi was still accounted for."

"Haru," Toto says.

"What?"

"You said Haruhi. While _Haruhi_ was still accounted for."

"Did I?"

"You meant Haru, right?"

"I... yes. I think so."

x

Haru. Her name is Haruhi.

x

The human world is large. Large enough for humans, and larger still for the handful of cats and Creations. Still, the Bureau searches - _Baron_ searches - and the Bureau's doors are shut more often than they are open now. They hit dead end after dead end, a merry-go-round of goose chases, and every day Baron feels his memory of Haruhi slipping away.

Her eyes.

Her voice.

Her smile.

"Maybe it's like grief," Muta offers gruffly, in a rare moment of seriousness. They have returned to the Sanctuary, and Baron is marking off another corner of the map where _she_ is not. "Yer mind starts to forget, outta kindness."

"I'm not grieving," Baron replies. He marks up another area - by the coast. Haru had always said she liked the sea. (Didn't she?) "Because she's not dead. She's still out there; I just need to find her."

x

She is not by the coast.

She is not in the seaside village, and she is not in the mountain town, and she is not in the cherry blossom city. Maybe. The world is so busy, so full of people that it would be all too easy to miss her by moments. Maybe she ducked into an alley the exact moment Toto flew over the streets. Maybe she was sleeping in while Muta roamed the cafes. Maybe this Haruhi is different enough from his that they're looking in all the wrong places.

Maybe.

But he has to hope not.

x

He has no photo - why would he? _This_ Bureau never met her - and by the time he realises he has forgotten her face, it is too late.

In desperation, he takes to paper. His art is satisfactory - nothing special, but he doesn't need it to be special. He just needs it to be _her_. And in the end it is not his passing pencilwork skills that hinder him, but his own memory.

He stares at the featureless face sketched before him, the eyes blank, the smile absent, and crushes it before rising back to the search. He will know her when he sees her again.

He has to.

x

Haru. Her name is Haruhi.

x

Baron returns from a particularly harrowing case - the client had arrived on the Sanctuary's doorstep a week ago, a human looking for a river spirit - to find his desk in disarray. Files smother the surface, scattered without rhyme or reason around a map scarred with inked notations.

He starts to call for Toto or Muta, to ask them for an explanation for this chaos, when he realises the writing is _his_.

He recognises the curl of the letters and the loop of the vowels, but there is a desperation in the slash of the words that is foreign to him. The ink is splotched with a hurried, harried haste, and the strokes are sharp. There are places where the pen has nearly buried through the paper.

At the centre of the map is a loose sheet, pinned to a heavily crossed off section.

It reads: _Her name is Haru Yoshioka._

He remembers.

x

Muta watches Baron change in the ensuing weeks.

He has learnt to adapt to this strange new Baron, this Creation fixated on a single purpose, a lone unending plight, and has come to terms with it. He does not worry the way that Toto does - but, then again, Toto always worries. Instead he has adapted, allowing the current of this obsession carry him along with little protest.

Because maybe this Haru does exist. Maybe she doesn't. But either way, this case will end eventually and life will return to normal. He has been dragged along on too many strange and esoteric adventures to baulk at stories of magically vanishing humans and swiss cheese memories.

But it is the recent changes that unnerve Muta more.

For he has come to accept this new, driven Baron. True, it is strange, but he _is_ a walking, talking cat figurine. _Strange_ is a given. The sudden shift was jarring, but at least it has been consistent.

Up until now.

When the old Baron begins to slip back in at odd, opportune moments.

It starts with a laugh, and Muta realises he has not seen the Creation truly smile since this all began. A client tells a story during a quiet moment of a case and instead of his attention waning off onto Haruhi topics, Baron is there and present, and the story's finale brings a chuckle. His eyes are bright and attentive, and there is a freedom to his movements.

It doesn't last long though. A stray comment brings him back to Haru, and Muta watches as that pained reserve slams back into place.

And so it continues. Round and round, alternating between old and new, faster and faster, and every time the new Baron returns, the fear in his gaze heightens.

It must be the strain, Muta decides. For there are limits even Baron's mind can reach.

x

Haruhi. Her name is Haruko.

x

It is during the last throes of summer when the memories slip too far, if only for a moment.

Toto hops into the Bureau, expecting to find Baron tearing through a fresh page of desperately composed notes, to instead find his oldest friend alarmingly still.

Baron sits at his desk, his head cradled in his hands, and when he looks up, Toto sees he is visibly shaken. The surface before him is partially cleared, the months of chasing ghosts swept up and an empty case file prepared to box it away.

"I forgot," Baron whispers. "I read over the notes and I just... didn't care. It was simply another unfinished case to be tidied away. I'm losing her, Toto. For good."

x

Maybe it's no bad thing, Toto considers. Maybe this is the saving grace that Baron needs, to pull him out of this obsession before it consumes him any further.

Maybe he should just let Baron forget.

But in the end it is their decades of friendship that wins out and, against his better judgement, Toto tracks down an old acquaintance who has such experience with shifting realities.

"Of course you're forgetting her," the old spirit tells Baron. "You should never have known her in the first place. This is just the world's way of setting things right."

"But this reality is _wrong_ ," Baron persists, fighting against the tide that wants to pull him into this Haru-less reality. And he knows that if the current claims him, he will never find his way back.

The spirit smiles, but it is a thing bittersweet and pitying. "There is no wrong or right reality," she says. "Only the one that we have. Sometimes they shift, sometimes they change, but that is just the way it is. You don't argue with a clock for the passing of time, do you?"

"Then why do I still remember her?"

"There are always remnants. Anomalies. The likeliest explanation is that you possessed something of hers when the shift occurred. Something that tied you to her."

Baron grips the old new cane. He tries to ignore how its nicks and scars are becoming more familiar each day, how it becomes harder to cling onto the tactile memory of how the cane lovingly carved by Haruhi fitted into his hand.

"Do you want my advice?" the spirit asks. "Allow yourself to forget her. The road you seek will only bring you heartache."

x

Before he leaves, the spirit pulls Toto aside. "You know this to be a mistake," she says. "Nothing good can come from trying to change what is. The other Creation is too young, but you... _you_ I had thought to understand such things. So why do you fight it?"

Toto glances back. He has sensed the conflict raging inside Baron, as the old and the new fights for him, and every day the new gains a little more ground.

It would be easy, too easy, to let the universe have its way. How ironic, Toto thinks, that the one time the right choice is the easy one, and yet he cannot take it.

"Because he is my friend," he answers.

The spirit nods wearily, understanding and yet no happier with the result. "Then, out of respect for the years we've known one another, I will give you this much. There are few beings who can alter reality so seamlessly, and fewer still with the inclination to do so on the scale of a single mortal."

"And you know where such individuals may be found?"

"I do." The spirit offers a silver compass, but lingers before it passes from paw to wing. "Be warned. You may not like the answers you find."

Toto takes the compass. "I can't sit back and do nothing."

The saddened smile the spirit gives betrays that that is _exactly_ what Toto should do.

x

It is easier than Toto would have liked to slip away from the Bureau.

Once upon a time, before all this began, Baron would have noticed within a heartbeat how Toto's attention and presence was divided, but now the cat Creation is distracted. Toto finds that his reappearance after a day's absence is met with mild confusion, as if Toto is a hat that Baron had misplaced and only in the finding realised he'd lost it at all.

Of course, Toto's search would go quicker if he recruited the use of either Bureau companion, but such a thing would be to admit he has a lead - to admit to Baron that there is hope - and he has no desire to add flames to that particular fire.

And so he searches for the spirit, being, _creature_ that is responsible for this reality shift and each time he returns empty-handed, the new reality has claimed a little more of Baron. Each time, the notes for this Haru are a little fewer, the fresh cases a little more prominent, the weight in his gaze a little lighter.

"Maybe yer should just let it go," Muta says to him one evening. They haven't bickered as much as usual - and in part that is due to Toto's absences, but there is a sharper reason in the toll the last half-year has taken on them both.

"Let what go?" Toto asks.

"Whatever secret thing yer up to help Baron." Muta raises an eyebrow as Toto startles. "Baron may have the attention span of a fruit fly right now, but I don't. Whatever yer up to, it's making you look almost as bad as Baron did at the start."

There is a bitter irony in that, Toto feels.

"So why not just let things take their course?" Muta continues. "After all, give 'im another month and he won't even remember that he was looking for this Haruko in the first place." He snorts as he collects up the dirty dishes on the table. "It's almost every day he starts to tidy up his desk before he remembers."

"Then why don't you?" Toto asks. "I'm not the only one being caught up in this ghost hunt."

Muta shrugs. "He hasn't forgotten fully yet. So I might as well help if he wants it."

"Do you think he'll find her?"

Muta doesn't answer that.

x

Eventually, after many false leads and wrong doors, the silver compass brings Toto to a tree's hollow that opens up into another world, and there he finds the spirit responsible.

It is a small thing, a winged mouse creature with a long golden tail that curls about it, and the barked walls encompassing the world tremble as it lays eyes on the newcomer. Toto takes a perch on a twisting root. "Good," he says. "So you recognise me."

"I have never seen you before in my life," the spirit hisses.

"Not in this reality, maybe," Toto replies. "But what about the one before?"

The spirit pauses, and Toto knows that at last - _at last_ \- he is one step closer.

"What about a human by the name of Haru Yoshioka?" he presses.

"What do you know of Haru?" the spirit demands.

"Only that she has vanished."

The spirit laughs, a wheezing, creaking noise that sounds more floral than fauna. "She has not vanished," it amends. "She is exactly where she should be."

"And where is that?"

"Living her life."

"Where?"

"In the Human World."

" _Where?_ "

"Not telling. Not telling."

"Why not?"

"Because you will ruin everything!" the spirit spits. "You and the rest of your little Creation office. You will drag her back into your world of magic and other realms and she will lose her grip on humanity. Again."

"Again?" Toto echoes. "What do you mean 'again'?"

"She is happy!" it continues. "She is happy and if you care you will let her be!"

The world creaks around him and when Toto suddenly finds himself outside the spirit's home, the tree is closed and the compass is broken.

x

Toto does not find the spirit again. He tries, but the way back is closed and part of him knows there is nothing more he will learn from it. It doesn't matter anyway.

By the time he returns to the Bureau, the desk is bare.

The last dredges of Baron's memory has dissolved away, and only the fragmented notes remain, now neatly filed upon a shelf alongside a dozen other cases. In time, Toto knows, it will gather dust and - maybe not in the next spring cleaning but one nonetheless - it will be removed to make room for newer cases.

He isn't sure why he and Muta still remember. Maybe it's because they only recall this reality's version, while Baron fought to retain both old and new and lost both in the fallout. When asked - carefully by Toto; he has no desire to reawaken the beast that has finally slumbered - Baron only takes a confused stance and quotes no memory of the case. Memory is fickle and all too hasty to blur; the missing months are only a droplet in the decades of his immortal life.

"Do you remember what you ate for dinner last Tuesday?" Baron asks back with a smile. (And how Toto has missed that smile.) "How about the case we finished two months ago? Or the guest we entertained the week before last? Life is busy, Toto, and we are not made to retain the entirety of it."

Baron doesn't realise the weight of that which he has lost, and Toto does not burden him again.

But in the end, the choice is taken from Toto, and it is a wayward comment from a client that opens that door once more.

It is a relatively simple case - should have been, should have been no more than a footnote in their adventures - but at the end the client lingers at the Sanctuary's archway, a bemused smile upon their face, and goes, "I'm sorry, but I just can't get over how much you look like him."

Baron quirks a smile back, surprised and naturally as curious as a cat. "Like who?"

"Just this... manga character." They stare a moment longer, that same expression as if trying to determine the flavour of a mystery tea. "From a story called The Cat's Repayment. You... you don't know anything about it, do you?"

"Not before now, no."

"Maybe a previous client took inspiration," Toto offers. "It wouldn't be the first time."

"Kinda rude for them not to tell you though," Muta adds.

Baron chuckles. "They say imitation is the truest form of flattery, Muta."

"Yeah, but they could've at least cut yer in on the royalties."

In the end, all the client can offer is the manga title and a name.

Haru Ikewaki.

x

It may not be the same Haru.

Toto's not even sure Haru was the name of this missing human. Baron's memory blurred so badly towards the end that he cannot recall if it was Haru. Or Haruhi. Haruko? He has no reason to assume this is a cruel joke by the universe, to tease out this lost human just as they had begun to move on in their lives, but he still accompanies Baron and Muta to the library in the dead of night to find this manga.

The story is told in three chapters, and it is only in the middle one that Baron's fictional counterpart makes his first appearance. True, the ears are sharper, the face almost mousy, and the bowtie bears polka dots that scar Baron's fashion sensibilities, but the resemblance is there, and by a name of Duke van Jikkingen there can be no doubt that Baron has played a part in the character's creation.

"Is that me?" Muta asks, squinting at a round white blob with the smug expression of a cat that had just finished eating an entire turkey just as their human arrived home. "Why'd they make me look so shifty? Hey, birdbrain, looks like you're here too - as a magpie. The mangaka must've known all it takes is something shiny to distract you."

"That happened _once_ ," Toto mutters, but good-naturedly. The humour fades when he sees the story it tells.

The details - like Baron's name, like Toto's species - are not quite right. But the little details don't matter. What matters is that the story he reads is one of Cat Kingdoms and saved Cat Princes and a Cat Bureau coming to the rescue of a young human embroiled in the misplaced gratitude of a feline monarch.

What matters is that it is the same tale Baron had clung onto for so long.

What matters is that somewhere, somehow, someone else remembered it too.

What matters is that her name is Haru.

So when Baron closes the manga and announces that it is high time to make a visit to this mystery artist, Toto's heart plummets. There is even a glimmer of unease from Muta, but Baron's eyes are still clear and focused, with no sign of the displacement his old memories used to impart on him.

It may not be the same Haru.

But Toto can't bring himself to believe that.

x

There is more than just one manga, they discover.

They vary in plot, but not in theme - in so many, it is of the ordinary discovering the extraordinary and fighting to get back home. A girl unlucky in love who trades her face for a feline mask and almost loses her humanity in the process. A young writer who stumbles into a cat library looking for inspiration and forgets herself. A boyfriend who tries on borrowed wings and becomes trapped in an avian form he cannot shed.

Birds and cats and Creations. And always, _always_ on the edge of forgetting. The tales spin round and round as if trying to describe a half-remembered dream that is never quite correct.

Sometimes Duke is there.

He navigates this fictional realm on the edge of normality, skirting the shoreline with uncanny ease and pulling people back from the line they won't be able to return from. Baron seems to be flattered by the interpretation, for whenever Duke appears, the reader can be sure that all will be well.

He doesn't see the way that Duke only ever appears just as the human has wondered _nearly_ too far, stayed _almost_ too long, strayed _just_ to the edge of no return. He doesn't see the way that Duke heralds danger just as much as he promises safety.

But Toto does.

The worlds that the manga show are ones of wonder and delight and beauty, but they are also ones of warning. Of the danger of forgetting oneself or running from your life instead of facing it. They are testaments that the spirit world is many things, but for humans is not one of them.

And Duke is as much a part of that as anything else in the worlds.

x

So Toto does not know what to expect when they track down this Haru Ikewaki.

Certainly he does not expect the beautiful little house on the edge of a quiet town, paired with a small garden filled with wildflowers. He does not expect the air of contentness that infuses the home, set to the tune of birdsong and gentle humming. He does not expect everything to feel so _right_.

He lands on the low branches of a cherry tree, and Baron slides off his back. Further down, Muta scrabbles along the branch Toto had dropped him onto. From their vantage point, they can see a slim silhouette moving through the kitchen.

"Is that her?" Muta grunts. "She seems so... ordinary."

And Toto can't bring himself to disagree. Even as she moves into the light, he finds himself almost... disappointed that there isn't even a spark of recognition in him. The woman before him is in her mid-thirties, her brown hair tied back into a messy ponytail and a pencil tucked behind an ear. Maybe he was right. Maybe this isn't the same Haru.

And that's when Baron drops his cane.

x

He remembers.

Baron remembers and the memories come flooding back in an ugly torrent of images and emotions and moments and he barely notices the cane as it slips from his grasp.

He remembers.

He remembers their first meeting, and he remembers the hours they spent together reading in happy silence. He remembers the visits to other worlds, showing her the dancing stars of one realm and the underwater rainbows of another. He remembers her disappearance and the months he spent tearing himself apart to find her again.

He remembers forgetting her.

"It's her," he whispers, and he looks to Toto. The expression he finds is one of pity and... something else? He doesn't have time to deconstruct it, because Haru is there, she is alive and well and _right before him_.

Toto places a wing before him before he can sweep into action. "She may not remember you," he warns softly. "And you may not be able to change that."

"I know," he says, although in his heart he does not want to believe it. "But at least let me try."

Toto watches him for a heartbeat longer, his eyes weary in that moment, and then nods and retracts his wing. "Just don't get your hopes up too high," he murmurs.

Baron only smiles back and drops down onto the windowsill.

He's unsure how to announce his presence - whether to knock or to call out to her - but he hesitates too long and the choice is taken from him when she looks up from the coffee she's making and sees him.

They both freeze, Baron with one hand raised to the glass and her with the teaspoon of coffee in midair.

She is the first to move. The coffee is lowered and she leans across the sink to hesitantly unlock the window latch. There is surprise in her eyes, confusion too - no recognition, but there is not quite the right amount of shock for someone who has never seen him before. "You," she breathes, and her voice is the same as he remembers. "You're _real_?"

He tips his hat in a motion he has done for her so many times before. "Indeed. My name is Baron Humbert von Gikkingen, and I believe I am a frequent visitor in your lovely stories."

"Well, yes, but... I didn't think you were... that is to say, I wasn't aware..." She sits, suddenly, into a nearby chair. "I don't understand how this can be, unless..."

"This isn't a dream."

She laughs, sharply, as if being told an unexpected in-joke. "No, that I know. I know what my dreams are like and this... this is not one of them." She leans forward, her eyes glittering in the sun and he wonders how he could have ever forgotten how they shine like gemstones. "Did I somehow write you into existence? Is this one of those 'stories come alive' kind of scenarios?"

Baron smiles. "Not exactly." It seems Toto is right, that he alone carries the memories still - but there has to have been something once for her to tell stories of him so. Maybe he can bring them back. "Miss Haru, are you aware of us having met before?"

She shakes her head. "No. I... I always just thought you were a character I had made up. If I had known there was actually a... actually someone like you, I would have asked before using your likeness."

"Indeed. It _is_ quite the uncanny likeness."

" _Have_ we met before?"

He looks at her. _Yes_ , he wants to say. _Yes, and I'm sorry I ever made the mistake of letting you go. I'm sorry I forgot. I'm sorry it took so long for me to find you again._

But he also sees the warm and loving house she sits in - a far cry from the small flat she rented when she worked as a librarian. He sees the framed covers of her successful manga. He sees the healthy glow of her skin and the brightness in her eyes that tiredness and long hours had stolen away from her in his timeline.

And then he sees the slim gold ring on her left hand and he realises that he may have had a part in her life before, but it is no longer that reality.

"No," he says.

She is happy.

And who is he to mess with that?


	2. The Found

Haru Ikewaki is happy.

She has been happy for a long time, a pool of contentness simmering in her lungs and beating in her heart in a way that she knows is real and solid. When she sees her beautiful home and the sunrise breaks over the distant mountains, she knows this. When she receives yet another letter from a fan telling her what a difference her manga have made to their lives, she knows this.

And when her doting husband kisses her to distraction, she know this. When he makes her laugh so hard she splashes the washing up everywhere, when he brings her coffee in the morning, when he draws her into dancing while waiting for the rice to cook, she knows this.

Yes.

Haru Ikewaki is happy.

And yet she dreams.

She dreams of worlds where she doesn't quite belong, of worlds that threaten to swallow her up, and sometimes they do. Sometimes she sees herself in a reflection but it is not her. Flakes of humanity fall from her until she is trapped in a form that is not her own, falling from her until the last sliver dissolves and she is someone - something - else.

But other times there is someone dear, someone close to lead her back. She takes his hand and lets him guide her through the maze of temptations and dead ends until her feet land on solid pavement and she is home. She looks back to her companion, but he is already vanishing.

She wants to reach out, to hold onto this friend for a little longer, but something instinctive always makes her pause. For the silhouette she sees is not quite human. Between glove and sleeve there is a sliver of ginger fur, the same fur that covers the sharp ears, and angular, feline eyes glimmer into hers. And she knows that she is as much in danger of losing herself to this companion as she is to the worlds that lure her in.

She lets him go.

For years she has woken to these strange dreams, and for years she has dealt by loosening the sense of otherworldly loss and danger onto her stories.

She never quite gets it right, but she keeps trying.

But now the stranger, companion, friend who leads her out has a face. She supposes she had already given a face to him in her art, but that had been akin to sketching a relative who had passed when she was only a toddler. It had never felt quite right, but now his face is clear and sharp, and every time she finds it harder to release him.

Until one dream, she doesn't.

She wakes that hazy summer morning and knows what she has to do.

She doesn't know how to find him - he gave no directions, no way back to him - but there is a stubbornness in her bones borne from years of sensing that there is something more just beyond her reach. Only now she has proof. She has a mystery.

And she follows it.

The irony is that her stories clutter up her search. If there were ever any evidence for a Baron von Gikkingen, it has long been buried beneath the fiction of her Duke van Jikkingen, and at first she curses the misdirection she herself has planted. But then she realises that maybe they aren't misdirection at all.

Maybe it's the way.

For her depiction of Baron wasn't quite right - but it was close enough. It was close enough to bring him to her door in search of answers for the woman who had captured him in fiction despite never laying waking eyes on him. And maybe the rest of her narrative held some truth, if not all.

So she picks up her earliest manga - the one that had been closest to her first dreams - and follows it. She journeys back to her hometown - the place she had always pictured when she drew - and starts from the Crossroads. There is no Muta to be seen, but it's only a starting point anyway. She ducks down a side alley, pausing only for a moment when she finds her way blocked by a rise of low roofs, and scales them with a reassuring ease of muscle memory. Across a tin roof and over an iron railing fence, down another alley so narrow that she has to twist to ease through, and then she comes to the final opening.

"Why are you searching for him?"

She turns.

The figure before her isn't Baron. It isn't even the white cat or crow that sometimes accompanied him in her stories. What she sees instead is a tiny golden harvest mouse with furred wings curving over its back. Its voice is strange; not a squeak or a flutter, but a thing of creaks and splinters. "I'm sorry?" she asks.

"Why?" it repeats. "Why do you follow him still?"

"Still?" she echoes.

"You are happy!" it snaps. "Happier than you ever were before! So why are you here? If you keep chasing after him, it will only bring you suffering!"

She looks at the creature. "I rather think I get to be the judge of that, do you?" she asks, and steps up through the archway.

Across the threshold, the air is somehow different. Strange, but not in a way that unnerves her. She inhales, and it settles her in a way she has only felt in the corners of her dreams.

"Miss Haru?" Caught up in the moment, she had not noticed the double doors of one of the smaller houses open, but now she sees him standing in the entrance. He blinks suddenly. "I apologise. Mrs Haru, I believe? To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Tell me," she says. "Tell me who you are."

He tilts his head in a way that is maddingly familiar. "As you wish. I am Baron Humbert von-"

"No," she says. "Tell me who you are _to me_."

And so he tells her.

He tells her of the origins of their friendship; of the schoolgirl who came to his doorstep with tales of rescued princes and kings overeager in their gratitude. He tells her of how she found her way back to the Bureau years later, not as a client but as a visitor. A companion. A friend. He tells her of the hours, days, years they spent in each other's company, until suddenly she was gone.

There are things he doesn't share, of that she's sure. There is a grief in his gaze that makes her wonder whether their friendship stayed strictly within the boundaries of platonic, but it's not her place to ask. There's the sense that no matter how much she learns, she can never bring things back to the way they once were.

That even in the finding, something vital has been lost.

"Well then," she says. "Let's go find some answers."

x

Haru doesn't know what she had expected from the Bureau.

For years, echoes of their personalities have resounded through her stories, fictional do-gooders with hearts of gold and a surety of step, but the reality is something far... messier.

She trusts them - she knows it is irrational, a childhood fantasy, and yet she cannot help it - but it doesn't render her blind to their faults. To their foibles. To how uncannily _human_ they are. If not on the outside, then on the inner. They are not the infallible heroes of her stories, but they are something far _realer_.

And so she steps up into their world.

 _Just one adventure_ , she promises herself, unaware of how she had made - and broken - the very same promise in another lifetime. _Just to find out why this is happening. Why I don't remember._

At first the Bureau are hesitant around her. Muta and Toto watch her as if she is a ghost, a half-figment of the imagination, but Baron looks at her as if she is liable to vanish at any moment.

She is not sure which unnerves her more.

But in time - and it does take time; they have been searching for answers for months already, and her sudden presence does less than they had hoped - the barriers crumble. After all, there are only so many adventures they can share before a sense of companionship springs up.

It is during one such adventure - another dead end - that Haru finds herself alone with Toto. Muta and Baron have gone rushing off on

"Why don't you like me?" she asks, and he turns to her with that grieving gaze that still lingers in the recesses of his eyes.

"I don't dislike you, Haru," he says.

"Then why do you look at me like that?"

"Like what?"

She smiles sadly. "Like I've broken your heart."

He stares at her for a long moment then, and she is almost sure he is going to brush her question away when he ducks his head, those sorrow-laden eyes finding solace in the branch beneath his talons. "It was easier before," he murmurs.

"Before?"

"Before I knew you. Before when you were a faceless ghost that Baron was wasting away in pursuit of."

"Before?" she prompts again.

"Before I cared."

A silence passes between them.

"You didn't see Baron before," Toto eventually continues. "He's always had a habit of pushing himself too far; of forgetting to look after himself when others are relying on him, and when he lost you... I thought that was going to be the line that pushed him over the edge. He was going to destroy himself searching for you, and in those moments I wished that he would just forget you."

"Your friend was hurting," Haru says. "You wanted to protect him."

"Yes."

Haru sighs, her misty breath spiralling up around her. "I understand."

"I didn't know you, Haru. I wasn't even sure you existed."

"And now? Do you still think I'm a ghost? She grins. "Should I be worried you're about to go full Ghostbuster on me?"

"Now you're a friend, Haru," he answers, no smile cracking at her loose humour. "I care about you."

"Aw, thanks, Toto-"

"And that's why I think you should leave."

Her next breath catches in her throat. "What?"

"You should go back to your human life, Haru. It's where you belong."

"Not before I find out what happened to me."

"What happened to you is that you've lived a very happy life," Toto replies, his beetle-black eyes suddenly stony. "Are you really willing to throw that away in pursuit of some asinine answers?"

"I'm not... I'm not throwing _anything_ away-"

"Really? Then when as the last time you spent an evening at home?" he asks. "How is progress on your newest manga going? Were you even aware that last month was your wedding anniversary?"

"I..."

"I can't remember what your life was like before things changed, but there's a reason Baron made the decision to walk away the first time he reunited with you. Even he, as caught up in the pursuit as he was, could see that you were happier in your life now than the one he remembers."

"Then why did he let me return?" Haru asks.

"Honestly? I don't think he has it in him to leave you a second time. But you do. You have the ability to go back to your life before you lose it."

"I can go back any time I like."

"Then why don't you?" The smile Toto gives does not reach his eyes; instead, a bittersweet glaze falls across his gaze. "I think I understand what the spirit told me now. If we hadn't found you, you would still be living happily in your human life." He looks out across the hostile mountain terrain. "But instead you are here."

"Here is no bad thing."

"No, but when the time comes - when we find our answers and have the chance to put things back to the way they once were - will you? Will you walk away from this world of magic and monsters? Or will you abandon the life you have built to run with us for a little longer?"

"I'm not abandoning anything," Haru retorts.

"You can't live in both our world and the human one, Haru. So, when the time comes, which will you choose?"

She is silent for a moment. "At least I'll have the choice," she replies. Her brow furrows with words she had previously overlooked. "What spirit? Who told you I'd be still living happily if you hadn't found me?"

"Haru-"

"What do you know that you're not telling us, Toto?"

"Nothin-"

" _Tell me_."

And he looks at her with that same grief she has come to know so well. "I may know the way to someone with answers."

"Why didn't you bring this up before now?"

"I didn't because you still had the chance to walk away. Because you still have time to forget and be happy again."

"I still will."

His gaze is pitying. "Are you sure about that?"

"No. But at least let me choose. In the end, this is my life, not yours."

He doesn't answer immediately. His attention flickers to the mountainous horizon, where the first hesitant tendrils of sunlight rise above the peaks. Then he nods. "Very well. I will show the way. But have you considered, Haru, that maybe what happened to you was a kindness, not a cruelty?"

x

The world Toto brings them to is one of bark and wood and, despite his warnings that the way back had been locked to him, they find their through with easy access. The world curls up around them like the inside of a tree, pockmarked with moss-green light that filters through. Haru recognises nothing, save for the sole occupant that flies down to greet them.

"You," Haru breathes. "You're the one who did this?"

The winged mouse spirit hisses.

"Do you recognise this spirit?" Baron asks.

"I... Not really," Haru says. "We met, briefly, just before I arrived at the Bureau."

"And I warned you then that you should turn back," the spirit says. "I warned you that chasing after _him_ would only bring suffering." And it nods to Baron with disgust as it speaks.

"And I told you that I was the one who gets to make that decision," Haru says.

"It's too late for that!"

She scowls. "So everyone keeps telling me."

"You are the one who changed reality then?" Baron asks. "Why?"

The spirit flits, and as it comes close Haru can see that the joints of its limbs are cut like wooden moving dolls. "Because she helped me before. In the other life," it answers. "I wanted to repay that."

"By changing the whole of reality?" Toto asks.

"No, not the _whole of_ reality," it skitters. "Just a... tweak, here and there. I don't have the power to alter much, but so much of her life hinged on a single choice. All I had to do was stop her for a moment."

"Lune," Baron murmurs.

The spirit nods and hovers before Haru. "The Cat Prince. You ruined your life because you saved a single cat, but I undid it. I made your life better!"

"Better?" she echoes.

"I looked into your life and I saw the sadness you carried. The regrets that haunted you. The opportunities wasted. You threw away your chance for an ordinary life because you were too busy chasing after a world that would never accept you. Chasing after the _Creation_ who would never love you."

Haru hears Baron's breath hitch in his throat, but she doesn't look to him. She doesn't want to see if it is truth or grief that lies in him. "So you took the choice away from me," she says instead.

"Because you made a bad choice!" the spirit retorts back, and the wooden world around them seems to darken and creak. "You were able to be so much more - look at what you are now! At what you have! At what I have given you!"

"What you have _given_ me?"

"Yes. Why don't you ask the cat Creation what your life was like before?"

Haru glances to Baron, and in all her recent time with the Bureau, she is unprepared for the shadow that smothers his eyes. "Baron?"

"You were a librarian," he murmurs. "Underpaid. Understaffed. You rented a small flat that your salary only barely covered. You tried to balance your time with us equally with your human life, but some parts of your life had to be sacrificed for that. You were..." He hesitates. "I thought you were happy, but it was a very different life from the one you now lead." Another hesitation. "You never married."

Haru twists the wedding ring around her finger and tries to imagine life without her wonderful, loving husband. Without the hiking days and the popcorn fights and the impromptu karaoke kitchen sessions.

Without the man she vowed to spend her life with.

"Never?" she asks.

"As I said," he echoes, "some parts of your human life had to be sacrificed to balance your Bureau side. You found it... _difficult_ to become involved with someone when half your life was a secret."

"Do you understand now?" the spirit asks. "Do you realise what you lost when you rescued the Cat Prince? Do you understand why I did what I did?"

"I... do," Haru says.

"So do you see why you need to walk away from this again?"

She looks at the spirit. "It should still have been my choice."

"It was once. You chose wrongly."

"Then let me try again." She approaches the spirit and allows it to come to a rest in her open hands. "Let me try again, this time knowing the consequences."

It looks up at her with dark, starred eyes. "What if you make the same mistake?"

"Then I will do so with eyes wide open," she says. "I know where both paths lead now. Please, if you want to do me a kindness, let me be the one to take those steps unhindered."

Moments pass, and she can feel something akin to a heartbeat shiver through the spirit's tiny form.

It nods.

"Now you know the consequences," it echoes, and vanishes.

As it does so, the world also shifts around Haru, and when she blinks again she stands alone in a vast empty void with nothing but a mirror's reflection before her.

No.

Not a mirror.

A woman, almost identical to her, smiles and bows.

"Hello. I'm Haru Yoshioka. I believe we have a lot to talk about."

Haru's voice sudden dries, and the words that peel themselves from her lips are cracked and hoarse.

"Are you... me?"

The other woman - the other _Haru_ \- gives a smile. "In a fashion."

Unbidden, Haru's gaze runs over the uncanny valley stranger, her eyes quick to note the dissimilarities that set them apart. For while this woman bears the same body, the history carved into her bones is alien to Haru. Her eyes are the same colour, but they are wearier, the bags beneath them weighted from long shifts and tight budgets. Her skin is duller, paled from too many hours spent indoors, and instead of a wedding ring there is a scar running along her left hand.

"You're... the Haru from the other reality," she says.

The other Haru gives the same half-nod, and Haru realises it is the same motion Toto gives so often. "I'm more like... an echo. There is a part of you that still remembers the life you lost, but it is distant. This is all that remains."

"Can you return my memories?"

The other Haru shakes her head. "No. The only way you'll be able to regain your memories is if you choose to go back down that path."

"But how am I meant to decide if I can't remember what my life used to be like?"

"Well... I guess that's where I come in."

She sees Haru's curious gaze, and laughs loosely and runs her palm over the scarred hand. "I always told the Bureau that I would never get involved in any of their cases, but the cases didn't always afford me the same courtesy. Being an associate of a Bureau that likes to stick its nose in other people's business comes with its own risk."

"It looks like it took its toll," Haru hazards, but she only receives a light laugh for her cautioned comment.

"Life does that."

 _Less for me than you_ , Haru thinks, but does not say it. Evidently she doesn't hide it as well as she'd hoped, for there is that same echoing laugh.

"Oh, what's the matter, Ikewaki? You don't like how your other option looks?"

"Is this when I make my choice?" Haru asks, pushing onwards. There is a smile in the other woman's voice as she calls Haru by her married name; a strangely impersonal address from an echo of another life.

"No. You'll know when the time comes, but for now... I guess this is a waiting room." The other Haru wrinkles her nose, as if twitching whiskers as she thinks. "Or perhaps an interview room. Regardless, when you feel ready, the choice will open."

Apparently her other self had picked up a flair for the dramatics. Probably from Baron, Haru decides. Well, if this is indeed a place for questions, she can oblige. "Is there a right answer?"

The other Haru - _Yoshioka_ , Haru can't help but think of her - shrugs. "Well, my reality _does_ pan out better for the Cat Kingdom, but... I don't think that's what you're really asking, is it?"

Haru reddens, uneasy with being seen through so easily. It is difficult to think in terms of people she has never met, whom she cared for in another life, but in her reality she has a different family. She has a husband and friends and a life she has nourished and cherished. "Is it true what the spirit said?" she asks. "Am I happier now?"

Yoshioka gives a Muta-like snort. "There are ways your life is quantifiably better than mine. Financially. Vocationally. Romantically. For that, I will not argue, but on the concept of who was happier... I could not say."

"You were working a dead-end job in a tiny flat."

Yoshioka smiles. "True. But have you ever seen the diamond horizon of the midnight world? Or spoken with giant lionturtles? Have you heard the first songs of the sky whales? There are ways in which my life was richer than yours, just as yours has its."

"I suppose."

"I won't lie to you; the life I made wasn't glamorous or comfortable." Yoshioka chuckles. "I did my fair bit of running from monsters, however much I tried to stay out of it, and there were opportunities I missed because I was too busy wrapped up in the Bureau's world but... every life has its trade-offs. There is more than one way to find happiness."

Her fingers brush almost tenderly over the scar that mars her left hand, tracing the raised skin and circling where it ends, and now Haru sees what she had missed the first time around. There is a steadiness in the other Haru's gaze, an easy confidence in the slope of her shoulders, and she realises the scars are not a sign of a near-failure, but of something survived. Something she was stronger than. Something she lived through to learn for another day.

Again, Yoshioka follows Haru's gaze, and her fingers slow. That same easy chuckle rises in the back of her throat. "Oh, I know. A little bit Humpty Dumpty, isn't it? Turns out humans get damaged a lot easier than cats and Creations."

"Do they... hurt?"

"There's always a few aches and pains." She motions to her knee. "The scar there always itches just before a storm which has its uses, sometimes." A laugh. "And they hurt like hell upon the receiving, but..." and she gives a soft smile, "the Bureau always puts me back together again."

Haru can't find it in herself to return the smile. She tries to imagine living the life Yoshioka has done - to imagine _choosing_ that life when a kinder one is taking - and finds she cannot. They are more than simply two variations on a person; they are different people, shaped by the choices they have made.

"Would you...?" Haru falters. "If I choose to keep my life, what happens to you?"

"If you choose to stand back, I think your reality will return once more and what's left of the old reality will disappear for good."

"Including you?"

"Including me." Yoshioka smiles sympathetically. "Oh, don't look so sad. I am merely the echo of a life that once was; you'll forget me along with all the other remnants of what once was. If you choose your current life, everything will go back to how it was before Baron turned up at your window." Another smile, bittersweet this time. "I think even Baron will forget this time around. I'm glad. It will be a kindness on him to have the last few years erased."

Haru hesitates. "Do I have to? Forget, that is?"

"I'm afraid you'll have no choice. You cannot truly live the life of this reality with the past shadowing you. You will be happier not knowing what you might have had."

Maybe so, Haru thinks, but despite everything - despite the chaos, despite the stress, despite the difficulty of balancing everything - she finds she does not want it to simply vanish. "I think I understand you a little better," she says. She looks up into the other Haru's eyes, and sees behind the tiredness lies a boldness that she had missed before. "You didn't just stay for the adventure, did you?"

"Is it that obvious?"

"You stayed because of the Bureau. Because of... of Baron."

The faintest blush colours Yoshioka's cheeks. "Yes."

"You love him, don't you?"

"Yes. And maybe the spirit was right. Maybe that's why I kept making stupid decisions, clinging on to a world I don't belong to, just to stay with him a little longer."

"Do you regret it?"

"No. Baron is..." and her other self pauses, but not from doubt. The smile that crosses her lips is achingly familiar; it is the same smile Haru gives her husband in their small quiet moments. It is a smile of surety of where she belongs. "He's reckless and dramatic and flawed and many other things; things you've come to know well enough in your time with him, I'm sure. But he is also kind and determined and brave. The way he sees life - not as an end goal to success or productivity, but as a chance to help others - it changes you. It helps you see the little things, to understand even the smallest choices can make the biggest differences." She inhales curtly, giving the ghost of an amused snort. "But I guess I don't have to tell you about that, do I?"

"I guess you don't."

There is a click from behind Haru, and Yoshioka glances past her. The smile that flits across her lips cannot hide the sadness. "I guess that means you're ready to go. Any last questions before you make your choice?"

"Only one. If you were in my shoes, would you do it all over again?"

"Yes. In a heartbeat, yes." Yoshioka's gaze softens. "But, in the end, it's your choice. It has to be yours."

"Thank you." Haru turns, and there is an old wooden door behind her. She reaches out and finds the handle unlocked, the door already gently ajar.

"Haru?"

She lingers. "Yes?"

"Whichever path you take, you will be happy." Although Haru isn't looking back, she can hear the affectionate smile in Yoshioka's voice. "In the end, the only question is what kind of happiness do you want?"

"I think I know now," Haru answers, and she steps through the door.

x

"Machida's not that cool anyway. My Tsuge is much cooler and... Haru? Are you okay?"

Haru halts midway through a step she does not remember taking and nearly drops the lacrosse stick raised over one shoulder. The face of her childhood friend stares into hers, concern and confusion creasing her brow.

"Haru?"

Haru lowers the lacrosse stick. She doesn't remember the shift from the limbo realm to here, although she knows there must have been a transition. She glances down at herself, and is greeted with the blue and white of her old school uniform. If she casts her mind back, her memory supplies her with images of running late to class and boring lessons and daydreaming on the school roof during lunch.

She gingerly raises a hand to the back of her head and finds a bruise rising from a stray football that had caught her during break.

Hiromi skips in front of her, head tilted to one side. "Okay, now you're freaking me out. Don't tell me you're still sulking because Machida laughed at you. You can do so much better than him anyway."

"I..." Vaguely, she remembers a boy from her class, dark hair and dark eyes and a smile that had made her 16-year-old self weak at the knees. She grins lopsidedly, amused as she recalls the drama of her teen years. "No, it's fine. It's just..." Something brushes past her legs and she falters as a purple-grey feline passes her by.

' _This is it_ ," she thinks. ' _This is where everything changed_.'

Hiromi's gaze follows, although not for the same reason Haru's does. Her attention wanders over the cat's golden collar and the gift box it delicately carries in its jaws. It's funny, Haru muses, that such details don't even phase her anymore. "What in the heck is that?"

"Cat burglar?" Haru offers automatically.

The girls watch as the cat trots up to the side of the road, carefully noting the idling traffic at the red lights before setting across.

"Where does he think he's going?" Hiromi wonders. She cups her hands to her mouth. "Hey, dumb cat! You'll get killed!"

The pedestrians finish crossing.

The lights turn green.

Hiromi turns away, seeing the situation cut and dried and beyond her reach. "Oh well, it's just a cat."

In another life, Haru turned away too. Even now, she feels the echoes of that choice reverberate through her bones, calling her to follow in its footsteps, but she stays. "This doesn't look so good," rises up onto her lips instead and she lets the words spill out.

She feels, rather than sees, Hiromi pause. "Huh?"

The cat drops the gift box and it fumbles to reclaim it. It does not see the lorry that thunders towards it, nor feel the road rumble from the oncoming wheels. It does not hear Hiromi's sharp intake of breath, or the belated warning she cries.

Haru, however, feels all of these things and more. The beat of her heart. The thud of her bag slipping from her shoulder. The hand caught around her elbow.

The last one is foreign, even in both her memories, and she finds herself pulled to a halt. She spins round to face Hiromi and the world is silent. The people that pace the street behind are frozen. Even Hiromi is strangely still, and her eyes have shifted from their usual greyish-green to an illuminated golden hue.

"Don't do this," Hiromi begs. Her voice is still hers, but there is the whistling wooden creak of the mouse spirit whispering between the words. "You don't know what you're giving up."

"I know exactly what I'm giving up," Haru says, but not unkindly. She offers a small smile. "You saw to that."

"Then _why_?"

"I..." and Haru hesitates. The life she remembers, the life she has lived courtesy of the spirit, has been a happy one. If the two choices were but buttons she could press, she is not sure she wouldn't repeat the passing years in a heartbeat.

But right now, there is someone who needs her and that overrides everything else.

She looks back to the frozen cat, caught in the same moment of time as the rest of the world, and smiles. "Because I can help."

"If you choose to stay, you will forget this," the spirit implores. "You will never know that you walked away, so don't fear the guilt."

She looks to Hiromi, to the spirit, and shakes her head. "You don't get it, do you? I thought I could do that, convince myself that because I wouldn't remember, it wouldn't matter to me that I walked away. But this is who I am. This is who I chose to be, and you took that from me."

"But, you were unhappy-"

"I probably was sometimes," Haru agrees. "And other times I probably wasn't; that's kind of how life works. But I don't believe my previous self regretted saving this cat for even a moment."

The golden eyes fade a little. "I just wanted to thank you for helping me. I wanted to repay your kindness."

Haru curls her hand around the fingers that keep her in place and gently holds them. "And you did. You gave me the chance to re-examine my life and decide where I want to take it. Just because it is not the path you imagined does not mean it's the wrong one."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure that this is what I want to do."

"And if you come to regret it?"

"Then I will have regrets." She places a kiss on Hiromi's cheek. "Just like everybody else. Now, I think it's time this story came to a close, don't you? You did what you set out to do; you helped. Now it's time to let me go."

Hiromi's hand loosens. "I'm sorry. I only wanted to thank you."

"And you did."

"Even if you're choosing for everything to go back to the way they were before?"

Haru smiles. "My past, maybe. But my future is all my own."

The spirit sees something in her expression, and its golden gaze softens. "Then run."

It releases her.

And Haru does run.

The world roars back into life all in an instant, a crashing thunder of sound and colour and chaos, and Haru feels each footfall jolt through her as she runs out into the path of the speeding lorry. She will make it, she's going to make it, and she laughs out loud as she scoops the cat up into the net of her lacrosse stick, the laughter still echoing through her as she trips over the pavement and is sent tumbling through a bush.

She sprawls on the path beyond and the world is still tumbling around her.

"I did it," she wheezes. "I chose."

"That you did."

She tilts her head back, and walking between the haze comes the crystal clear image of the other Haru. As she approaches, the background behind her blurs yet further, and Haru starts to realise that maybe it's not the world, but the reality that's slipping from her.

The other Haru kneels down beside her, her smile gentle and her gaze gentler. "Thank you."

"Someone needed help," Haru says. "I couldn't walk away."

"I know."

"I guess you do."

And the world changes all over again.

When it reforms, Haru Yoshioka is standing before the Bureau and everything has changed.

"You," she says to Baron. "We need to talk."

x

Haru Yoshioka sits in the café and watches a stranger order coffee from the waitress.

She has never met the man, not in this reality, but in her mind are the shadows of the memories of a life spent with him. There is something akin to recognition in the way he runs a hand through his hair, and she feels like she would guess the end to his jokes before he reached them, but she does not know him.

Not anymore.

"Do you wish you had chosen him instead?"

She tears her gaze away from the almost-stranger and to the man sitting across from her instead. There is the faintest ripple of illusion magic across his face, and if she squints she can nearly see the ruffle of ginger fur in place of skin. "No," she says. "I just... I just wanted to see him."

"It is him, then?"

"It is."

The stranger heads for a table, coffee cup in a hand that he raises above the children that scoot by him. He passes a good-humoured comment to the harried parents that are attempting in vain to herd their offspring and is met with a returning laugh. When he finally secures a table, it is with a book in hand that he settles down.

Haru's heart aches in a way she was not prepared for.

She does not remember much about the life that did not happen, nothing concrete that she can describe, but sometimes the memories come in flashes. Emotions and moments and heartbeats. Knowing something without words. And, in that moment, she knows she was happy with this stranger.

Baron's hand curls around hers and she holds it tight.

"Are you okay?"

"Fine," she says, and she is shocked by the way her voice wavers.

"You can still choose again," Baron murmurs, and when Haru looks to him, she sees his gaze is locked on their joined hands. "The past is fixed, but the future is always open."

Unbidden, her eyes are drawn back to the man who had once been her husband, but she does not release Baron. There is a realness, a solid sureness about the stranger. He is like a rock in a storm, an anchor, steady; everything that reckless, heart-led Baron is not.

She has stared too long, and the stranger feels her eyes on him. He looks up and they lock gazes. His eyes crinkle with a small smile and Haru wonders if he knows it too, if only for a heartbeat, what had once been.

The moment passes and they look away simultaneously.

"Haru, if you wish..."

Baron's hand loosens, but Haru does not let him go. Instead she bridges the gap between them and kisses him. In the space she leaves between them when she breaks away, she whispers, "Don't you get it yet, Baron? I chose you."

He leans his forehead against hers, and the breath he releases is laboured with relief. "When you asked to find him, I thought-"

"I needed to shut the final door on that life," she says. "I needed the closure. To walk away from it in this reality too." She reaches up with her free hand and caresses his cheek, finding reassuring in the feel of the real Baron beneath the illusion. "As someone once told me, there is more than one way to find happiness. And I chose this way."

For a second, the illusion ripples and Haru sees a flicker of Baron's uncanny gemstone-eyes shimmering with emotion before the human façade returns. She kisses him again and pulls him to his feet.

"Come on. Let's get out of here before Muta and Toto can worry that I've eloped with my mysterious other-life husband," she whispers.

Most things have stayed the same in her return. Her life is hectic, juggling her librarian human life alongside her Bureau one with about the same finesse as before, and she still fights through long work shifts and haphazard sleeping schedules to the disapproval of her mother.

But some things have changed.

On their return to the Bureau, they come to a street musician and Baron twirls her as they pass by. She spins in his arms, drawing close enough to feel the rich tenor laugh reverberate through him and she plants another quick kiss on his cheek before she spins back out.

Yes, some things have changed.

And Haru Yoshioka is happy.


End file.
